Posted on 02/03/2004 11:59:35 AM PST by stainlessbanner
Author Barbara Smith of Washington, N.C. will sign her book, "Burning Rails As We Pleased," at the Civil War Living History Weekend scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 14, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, Feb. 15 (10 a.m. to 3 p.m.) at Roanoke Island Festival Park.
She will be in The Museum Store Saturday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and return in the afternoon 1-4 p.m. The book is a compilation of letters her great-grandfather wrote to his family during the Civil War.
Her late grandmother who had them in a box labeled "Mom's Stuff" passed on the letters to her. As a child, Smith spent a part of every summer with her grandmother. She recalls, with tender excitement, how "she would get out this box full of letters and she would read them to me. It became a special summer ritual and it was sort of our cozy little thing." After her grandmother died in 1955, "A piece of my life was just cut out and they remained in the closet."
Many years later, while visiting a civil war battlefield with her daughter, she told her for the first time about her great-grandfather, his letters and the box. This led to Smith's 2002 New Years resolution--to transcribe the letters in the box marked "Mom's Stuff."
The project became an obsession and she often spent 12 to 14 hours a day scanning the letters on her computer. It was obvious that a book was in the making!
The letters of William Garrigues Bentley begin the day he enlisted as a 19 year-old Quaker boy from an Ohio farm. He marched through Kentucky and Tennessee and on to Georgia and the Carolinas. His firsthand account of events proves to be compelling and often graphic in detail. Smith alludes to his recounting of the Battle of Franklin, one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war, as so upsetting she could not eat for the rest of the day.
Bentley tells his brother, who was three years younger, not to enlist. According to Smith, "nobody understood really what they were fighting for. Both the North and the South, when they would talk to their prisoners, really thought they were fighting for the same thing. He tells of the harsh winters, one in which his company had to burn fence rails to stay warm. Food was scarce."
Smith will not give the ending of Burning Rails As We Pleased but shared that it was a sad one. "It'll make you sit there and cry," she said.
From all the research she has done, Smith has a new insight on war." War hasn't changed. The very same things that meant so much to them in the Civil War are the same things that mean so much to the boys that are in Iraq and Afghanistan right now-home, packages, letters."
Smith already has plans for another book- one that will be about her own life and history.
The Civil War Living History Weekend will feature re-enactors of Union and Confederate soldiers and Civil-War Era sailors, artillery demonstrations, blacksmithing, rope making, woodworking, lectures, presentations, performances and children's activities. Venues will be both inside and outside. The event is funded, in part, by the Tourism Assistance Grant Program of the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau and is open to the public.
For additional information, call (252) 475-1500 or visit online at http://www.roanokeisland.com .
If you only read one book on the subject, and I hope it will be many more, I'd recommend Gen. Porter Alexander's Fighting for the Confederacy. Lee's artillery commander, Alexander was at most all the major battles in the eastern theater, and he wrote the book for his family with no intention of publishing it. His heirs published it and many of us are so glad they did!
A finely written account with the 'I was there' viewpoint and authority.
623,000 innocent warriors - some old, some just children - died - the vast majority left behind nothing but memories.
Kudos to Barbara Smith for honouring her ancestor.
Manure.
"I travelled in the United States in 1859, the year before the fatal shot was fired at Fort Sumter, which has made such terrible reverberations since. I travelled in the United States—I visited Washington during the session of the Congress, and wherever I go, and whenever I travel abroad, whether it be in France, America, Austria, or Russia, I at once become the centre of all those who form and who avow strong convictions and purposes in reference to Free-trade principles. Well, I confess to you what I confessed to my friends when I returned, that I felt disappointed, when I was at Washington in the spring of 1859, that there was so little interest felt on the Free-trade question. There was no party formed, no public agitation; there was no discussion whatever upon the subject of Free Trade and protection. The political field was wholly occupied by one question, and that question was Slavery."
...The members from the Southern States, the representatives of the Slave States, were invited by the representatives of the Free States to state candidly and frankly what were the terms they required, in order that they might continue peaceable in the Union; but in every page you see their propositions brought forward, and from beginning to end there is not one syllable said about tariff or taxation. From the beginning to end there is not a grievance alleged but that which was connected with the maintenance of slavery. There were propositions calling on the North to give increased security for the maintenance of that institution; they are invited to extend the area of slavery; to make laws, by which fugitive slaves might be given up; they are pressed to make treaties with foreign Powers, by which foreign Powers might give up fugitive slaves; but, from beginning to end, no grievance is mentioned except connected with slavery,—it is slavery, slavery, slavery, from the beginning to the end. Is it not astonishing, in the face of facts like these, that any one should have the temerity, so little regard to decency and self-respect, as to get up in the House of Commons, and say that secession has been upon a question of Free Trade and Protection?"
-- Cobden, Richard Title: Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, M.P.
Publisher: T. Fisher Unwin
Location: London
Edition: 3rd edition, 1908
First published: 1870
Walt
If the confederacy was free to trade with the world without having to use Northeastern shipping and warehousing after the rebellion then why didn't they trade with the world without using Northeastern shipping and warehousing before the rebellion?
But much more importantly, it meant that the very low tariff system compared to that of the North that was being put in place in the South would now draw shipping out of the ports of Boston, Phila. and New York to Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans.
And? The goods bound for northern consumers would still go to New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Only that small percentage bound for southern consumers would have headed south.
Lincoln then devised a naval mission to be sent to Ft. Sumter, while dis-regarding six or seven attempts by the South to keep the peace.
He ignored six or seven demands from the leaders of the rebellion to recognize the legitimacy of their acts.
That would ean using free labor and the powers that be in the South were against free labor.
Walt
"From the Fields of Fire and Glory: Letters of the Civil War" by Rod Gragg. Interesting because it includes reproductions of the actual letters.
"All for the Union: Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes" by Robert Hunt Rhodes. Union soldier prominently quoted in Burns' documentary.
"For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War" by Dr. James McPherson.
"Mother May You Never See The Sights I Have Seen: The 57th Massachusetts Veteran Volunteers in the Last Year of the Civil War" by Warren Wilkinson.
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